


salt the ropes, hold me down

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 10:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10569678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: There is no pleading that could make his case any less clear-cut. He is a murderer. He has destroyed the lives of innocents.He would do it again.(Anders reflects on a life spent and misspent)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pear/gifts).



> This was a really interesting exercise for me, partly because I love living inside this universe, and partly because my feelings toward Anders are so many-layered and difficult. But when Pear mentioned "depressed mages" I couldn't resist. And I couldn't resist including Dorian, either.

“ _Skyhold_ is apt, no? You’re being held, and all you can see is the sky.” 

Anders opens his eyes, his consciousness hauled upward like a body from a well. 

The first thing he sees is indeed the sky, snow grey through an arched window. It could be late or early--this far south it’s hard to tell. Next there is the deluge of memories, violent and fractured and painful to dwell on. The usual, then. 

His visitor is as fancy as his accent. Northern, from his skin and hair, Tevinter from his blithe arrogance. His clothes are clean and finely made, though worn ragged enough around the edges that it’s clear the leather vambrace covering one arm is not just for show. The hem of his embroidered coat sweeps the floor, and Anders doesn’t recognize the cut of the high tooled collar but it is clear what this man is. He can taste it in the air. And in the staff resting propped beside the door.

“This is all rather dramatic, isn’t it?” The Tevinter sits down on an overturned crate and crosses his legs like he’s dining in an open-air cafe. “Imprisoning you in a tower. It’s not as if you’re a flight risk.” 

Anders twitches his splinted leg. The elfroot they’d filled him with has begun to wear off, little splinters of pain radiating up toward his spine. He looks at the Tevinter’s fingers splayed elegantly on his own well-booted leg, catching the flash of a signet ring. A _Magister_. 

“I know someone who would kill you on sight,” he says through a heavy rasp. He hasn’t spoken aloud in quite a long time. 

The man smiles gamely. “Odd. I know several million Andrastians who would do the same to you.”

Anders pulls himself into the closest approximation of a sitting position he can reach on a lumpy straw mattress with a leg broken in two places. Lying down would be more comfortable, but far more vulnerable. “I thought they’d send the Seeker. Aren’t interrogations her job?” 

“Cassandra is Seeker no longer. Her tenure died with the Divine. The Inquisitor suggested a mage to ensure the right questions will be asked, and someone unaffiliated with the Chantry, so there will be at least a slim chance of impartiality.” He gives Anders another glossy smile. “And I volunteered.” 

“How civically-minded of you.” 

The Magister’s posture stays relaxed, his expression remains calm, but he still _sharpens_ , somehow. The power that seethes under every mage’s skin when they steer themselves to a purpose. “I wanted a chance to speak with the man who single-handedly leveled a continent.” 

Anders makes no move. “I destroyed a building.” 

“You lit a fire,” the magister says. “Knowing full well how fast and far it would burn. I’m Dorian, by the way.” His smile is wide and his teeth are very white. “Dorian Pavus.” 

“Call me Anders,” Ridiculous to introduce himself when he is the most wanted man in Thedas, but Pavus still nods acceptance.

“I’ll see what I can do about getting you a real bed.” Pavus nudges the edge of the mattress. “This can’t be good for your condition.” 

Anders looks up at him through the greasy fall of his hair. “What is this, good mage/bad templar? Is someone going to come and rough me up later? Or is that part of your job?” 

“Only if you’re very, very good.” 

Anders feels something grinding inside him that he recognizes, distantly, as amusement. 

Pavus says. “I’m simply here to listen when you talk. We need the truth.” 

Anders snorts. “Why? I’ve already admitted to everything. What truth is there left? I didn’t flee because I don’t know I deserve to die. I just fiendishly don’t want to.” 

“Understandable! I deeply sympathize. But there’s always more to the story.” 

Anders shakes his head. “You sound like Varric.” 

“I suppose I might.” Pavus folds his hands, ring flashing in the scant light the barred windows allow. “Maker knows I’ve spent enough time around him to pick up a few habits. Think of it as posterity, if you like. Something for the history books.” 

Anders rubs at his cheek, no doubt transferring more dirt to his face from his grubby hands. “I suppose I should start at the beginning, then.” 

“A very good place to start.” 

-

When they come for his mother, Anders knows it’s his fault. 

His name was not Anders then, of course, but that isn’t important. What is important is the price for concealing a mage from the Chantry. Nothing can save his mother from that price--not her station or her name or all the gold in the Deep Roads. 

Anders wonders across the years what people would say if they knew where he came from--crystal goblets and lace stockings and deep basins full of hot water even on the coldest days. The kind of soap that makes you smell like a wildflower. That life is now so distant that the memories themselves feel worthless, like someone else’s experience he once had briefly described to him. That he could have ever been other than what he is--this crippled shadow of a man with hairline fractures in his soul--is laughable. 

They come for his mother and then they come for him. There are Circles of Magi in the Anderfels but he is sent to Ferelden. He is too young to wonder why. 

Anders is not vicious enough to be feared, not magically talented enough to be admired, but by some grace of the Maker he grows up charming. He also grows up pretty, which is its own blessing and its own curse. It’s easier to talk favors out of people when you’re cute, but it’s also easier to end up pinned to a wall in the empty baths by an off-duty templar breathing sour, ale-soaked breath into your face. 

Also--easier to talk yourself out of tranquility after botched escapes. Or, rather, easier to get someone to talk _for_ you. 

“I won’t always be around to save your ass,” Karl Thekla tells Anders after attempt number three. 

Anders is seventeen and very charming indeed. He perches on the edge of Karl’s desk. “Hmmm...I think you’re lying, Enchanter Thekla. I think you like my ass too much to let it come to any harm.” 

Karl’s eyes roll toward the ceiling, begging the Golden City for strength. 'Senior Enchanter' is his proper title, though it does him a disservice, in Anders’ opinion. He’s barely forty. Anders grins and drags a bare foot up the inside of Karl’s leg

“Maker give me peace, boy.” 

“I’m far more fun than the Maker,” Anders grins, cheekily blasphemous in the way he knows Karl likes. 

The Maker--Anders has gleaned from a lifetime of reading between the lines of the Chant and books high on the shelves in libraries he isn’t supposed to have access to--is just another tool in a vast arsenal for making those with power yield to those without. Like the phylacteries, the threat of arch demons, and the right of tranquility. Whether or not the Maker actually exists has very little bearing on the influence his name evokes. 

When they come for Karl, Anders knows it isn’t because of the no less than three times they are discovered in less-than-professional and less-than-clothed circumstances. Once with Anders on his knees behind Karl’s desk, once in an alcove in the baths, and once in Anders’ bunk when the rest of the apprentices are at lessons, Karls fingers locked with his, the hard push of his hips driving him absolutely out of his mind, shunting it upward and out past the tower walls. That isn’t why. 

Fraternization may be forbidden, but that rule is only enforced by a few easily-avoidable outliers. Such a thing is inevitable in such close quarters, where everyone lives with the constant threat of death or tranquility, where they spend so much time tapping into primal forces and quelling their own drives. And when you own nothing--are nothing--by theocratic decree, you learn to make the most of your only natural currency. 

Anders trades blowjobs for books, the slick press of his thighs for extra rations, and does not think less of himself for it. He steals an Enchanter’s jeweled belt and pries the stones out to trade with the Antivan merchants who come through every season or so for enough lyrium to keep him at the head of the under-the-table trade for a few short months, before three older and broader apprentices beat him half to death and scare him off it. 

When Jowan--an idiot--and Surana--a scrawny elvhen girl with an overbite and a future in politics--break into the phylactery vault, Anders cheerfully sells them out in exchange for the watch roster for the next fortnight. Honestly, it turns out fine for everyone, really. Well, except for maybe Jowan. 

So, no--it isn’t because of the sex. Or because of the favoritism. They take Karl because he stands up for Anders against the Templars, and because he doesn’t believe in the Chant. 

After Karl’s departure, he spends the night crying silently into his folded arms. The next night he burns the phylactery vault to the ground and he swims across that freezing fucking lake, dragging himself out onto the pier at daybreak and into an empty cottage to light a fire in the cook pit, and fall into a near coma-like sleep for a day and a half. 

They would have caught him easily--he didn’t even have the strength to run out of sight of the Circle tower--but that was the day an Enchanter named Uldred decided he’d finally had enough. 

The next time Anders sees Surana is through a sheet of fire in a keep in Amaranthine. She is a year older, worlds deadlier, and infinitely sadder. Karl he never sees again in his right mind. 

“I’ll protect you,” Karl used to murmur to Anders in the small hours of the morning when they lay sweaty and spent, their legs tangled together. “I’ll protect you.” 

Foolish old man. He should have protected himself. 

\--

 

Pavus raises a sculpted eyebrow. “So you spent years fucking your teacher.” He sounds mildly impressed, and even through the pain and the apathy Anders feels a glow of pleasure that he can shock a Magister. “And when he was transported you thought, ‘ _well, that’s torn it. might as well escape for good’_.”

“More or less.” Anders shifts his weight--one of his buttocks is going numb. “I promise you I don’t always look this grubby. I’ll have you know I was quite capable of seducing any number of teachers.” 

Dorian gives him a slow, lazy once-over. “No doubt.” 

Anders likes that. He hasn’t been flirted with in a long time, and it hardly makes a difference that Pavus is only doing it to flatter him. There is barely enough of Anders left to flirt with, and it’s been a long time since he has bothered to have those sorts of desires. Justice always found sex to be a waste of time. 

“Tell me about your demon.” Pavus says, uncrossing his legs and then neatly recrossing them. “I have to admit I am fascinated. Magisters don’t deal with demons. At least, not publicly.” 

“Oh, believe me. I know all about Magisters. I’ve met your Corypheus.” He watches Pavus for any signs of shock but gets none. So either his gaming face is excellent or Varric has betrayed more of Hawke’s secrets than Anders would ever have credited him for. “He was a Magister desperate for power.” 

“Says the man who has lived as an abomination for a decade.” 

“That wasn’t for _power_ ,” Anders snaps. 

Pavus wears his signet ring on his right hand, as is Tevinter custom. On his _left_ hand is a simple copper band, and at Anders’ words it glows an ice-white. “Honesty spell.” Pavus curls his fist. “A rather worthless charm when you consider how elusive the truth is, and how often people are unconscious of their own motivations…” He leans forward. “But even you know that’s horseshit.” 

Once upon a time Anders would have jumped at the chance to rally his own power against a Magister’s. But now every ripple of magic in his veins is a memory, and memories ache like old wounds. His jumping days are over. 

“The ‘why’ is complicated. It would be easier to just tell you how it happened.” 

It happened in a noisy pub just shy of midnight, exhausted and filthy from a rout in a canyon outside Amaranthine. Anders is shivery from the chains of braided lightning spells, the reams of mana siphoned from the depths of him, and he doubts he’ll ever get the stink of burning Genlock out of these clothes. In the liquid shadows of the table’s single candle, his drinking companion looks almost as if he could be a living man. 

Justice sits with his hands clasped on the table in front of him. Usually he’d have a drink just for appearances sake, but this close to Surana’s keep people know of the quiet Templar with the strange habits, even if they don’t know what he truly is. Anders waves him away as he tries to launch into their usual argument. 

“I’m not in the mood, Jess,” he grunts into his tankard. They’ve hashed through all of it over and over again. Mages and righteousness and The Cause. 

Justice snorts, but for once he doesn’t push. It’s been a nasty week--weather and tempers have all been bad. Justice is doubtless feeling the strain. As much as a spirit can feel anything which, Anders knows, is more than he lets on. 

What happens next is a scene Anders will replay again and again across his life. Not so much what it looked like, but rather the series of thoughts braiding together the circumstances that led to his next decision. 

He’s edgy tonight, because he recognizes the men seated at the inn’s best table in front of the fire, eating the best cuts of meat. They are attempting to blend in, dressed in riding leathers and travel-stained cloaks, holes in the soles of their boots, but they give themselves away with their neatly similar haircuts and the well-fed roundness. Also the lyrium tremor in the closest one’s hands doesn’t help matters. Anders has spent a lifetime reading Templar’s moods, and the last two years running away from them. 

Justice and Anders keep their heads down, and Anders is just about to settle up their tab, when the Templars both sit up straight. An elvhen boy has just stepped behind the bar, ostensibly to begin his work shift. Anders has noticed him before because he is handsome and friendly, and because he is an apostate. 

When the elf sees the Templars he does the very worst thing he could. He throws a handful of flame at their table, and he bolts for the back door. They catch him before he is halfway and drag him in the opposite direction, toward the front and the deserted street. 

Anders has seen this happen before. Not at this specific pub, but at others. In town squares and market streets. Once inside a Chantry yard despite the protests of a Revered Mother and several clerics. Those times he had looked the other way and congratulated himself it hadn’t been him. 

The bartender looks like he wants to interfere, but he won’t, and no one will blame him. The boy might be a nice lad, a good worker and possibly a friend, but there are limits to goodwill. And it’s not like his position will be a hard one to fill--lots of refugees these days, lots of people willing to mop up spilled ale for a wage. 

The patrons all go quiet but no one moves. A few of them wince when the larger Templar backhands the boy, but that’s it. Not worth getting involved. If these Templars don’t get him, some others surely will, and isn’t it safer to have rogue mages off the streets anyway?

Helplessness and rage are not new emotions for Anders--he feels them often, if not for long and never publicly. But this blooming sense of inevitability, the certainty that nothing is ever going to change--that’s new. That presses against the inside of his skin until he’s shuddering. 

He and Justice stand up together and lock eyes. They move toward the door, their synchronization a foreshadow of what’s to come. 

The night tastes like smoke--Anders remembers that. He remembers he is unsteady with drink, having thought they were safe for the evening. He does not remember the sundering moment or the decision that led him there, or even what he said to Justice, if he said anything at all. All he knows is that suddenly he wants it--longs for it. To never live with the threat of imprisonment and death, to not have to laugh off years of quiet fear, to not stand and watch as it happens again and again. 

All he has to do is want it, and Justice lets him have it. 

\--

“That’s all?” 

Anders shrugs against the stone wall. “That’s all.” 

Somewhere along the line Pavus’ posture has lost a bit of its luster, slackening as he is drawn into the story. “I was sure you did it to save your own life or the life of a friend. Possibly the demon’s life. Are you sure it didn’t just...take you?” He grins apologetically at the word choice. 

Anders’ chuckle is a bit out of practice but he remembers how to do it. “Everything between Justice and I has always been absolutely consensual. I wanted to let him in and he wanted to be inside me.” He hooks a brow at Pavus, seeing his double entendre and raising it. Or lowering it, depending on your sense of humor. For a moment this feels like talking to Hawke or Varric, a thought he immediately tries to banish, because it hurts. “Don’t you think I’ve tried to come up with a better explanation than ‘I was drunk, I was irritated, I had an itch on the bottom of my foot’?” He rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I have even attempted to convince myself that the apostate boy was a human with flaxen hair and dark eyes, and he reminded me of myself. Or that he was a friend of mine. But he wasn’t. I had never spoken to him before.” The light is dying now and the only source of illumination is Pavus’ truth ring, still glowing softly, although he hasn’t accused him of telling any more lies. “Do you know what it’s like to reach a breaking point? The absolute certainty that if you have to take one more moment, one more straw on your back, you will rupture?” 

“Yes,” Pavus says. 

The interview ends there, but Pavus comes back again, and again. On one visit he tells Anders to call him his given name--Dorian--and on another he makes good on his promise to have Anders moved, transferred to a small chamber in a less drafty section of the fortress. He is still chained and he’s told there is a guard posted day and night, but he has a bed and a fireplace, and is substantially more comfortable. 

“You handle that surprisingly well,” Dorian says. “For a healer.” 

“You mean this?” Anders taps the splint. “I got used to pain in Kirkwall. No use wasting healing magic on myself when there are thousands of sick and injured refugees lining the streets. Unless my wounds were life-threatening, I let them be.” After a moment he adds, “And it was far easier to garner sympathy for the cause if I had a few obvious bruises.” 

Dorian smiles at that. 

It could be the enchantment that is making him more honest and less prone to slanting the truth to place him in a good light, the way he always had in Kirkwall. It could also simply be that he doesn’t care anymore. There isn’t enough left of him to bother hiding the ugliness of himself. He has no goal, no endgame. He never wanted anything more than to give the mages a fighting chance, and he’s done it. With a side-effect of also possibly dooming them. 

There is a debauched rawness in giving up every part of yourself, every guarded secret. He’s heard the phrase “the truth will set you free”--he can’t really remember where, perhaps in the Chant--but instead it is hollowing him out, boiling him away to nothing. 

“I can barely remember the first few weeks,” he says on a cold, drizzly evening, chairs drawn up to the fire. “I was conscious, but unused to seeing the world through Justice’s eyes. A spirit’s mind works...differently than ours. And he had never inhabited a human body before. A living human body, at least, with a consciousness already inside it that needs to eat and sleep. We ran on instinct for awhile.” 

“When you say ‘we’.” Dorian raises an index finger on each hand, before bringing the tips of them together. “Do you mean that the two of you were discrete entities?” 

“No, not at all.” Anders watches the flames and tries to peel his thoughts into clean lines of coherence. He had described the phenomenon in his manifesto, but never to his satisfaction. “It wasn’t like having a voice in my head, and Justice didn’t wear my body like he had the corpse’s. We became one being, one mind, one soul. There is no identifiable place where he begins and I stop.” He looks down at his hands, the battered knuckles and pinky that had been broken twice and healed crooked both times. “I even considered changing my name, honestly.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

Anders turns his hands up. “It wasn’t my real name in the first place, obviously. I’ve...never truly felt a great connection to it. And I wanted to be recognizable to those who’d known me in the Wardens, in case I ever needed their influence or assistance, and by Ferelden refugees who required my aid. But I was no longer the man I once was.” 

“Justice corrupted you.” 

“No. I’m quite certain it was the other way round.” 

Dorian’s incomprehension is almost sweet. Anders wonders if he is younger than his comportment might suggest, and still confident in his assessment that humanity is inherently good. Or possibly anyone who is not himself is inherently good. 

“Justice is the embodiment of a concept--it is pure. It is not spiteful, not fueled by emotions. It’s logical and follows a cause and effect. People aren’t like that. I’m not like that.” 

When Justice had suggested a fusion, Anders doubts he fully understood the implications. He may have been born of humans dreams and ideals, but he fundamentally did not understand them. Anders wonders what it must have been like for him when they merged, to discover that deep, untapped well of screaming emotion? Anders can’t blame him for not knowing about it--he had hardly noticed it himself. Just every so often a ripple would form on his surface and he would do something like escape a tower or set a roomful of Templars on fire. But he’d always made sure to do it with a smile and jaunty toss of the head. 

Justice--when combined with overwhelming hatred--becomes something much different. 

He rubs at his eyes. They are bone dry. “I’ve never talked to anyone about this. Not even my friends. And before you make the joke, I did have friends. Very, very good friends.” 

“I imagine,” Dorian says, “That they are the reason you were able to stay alive for so long.” 

Anders nods. “They...I could never really talk to them about Justice. They all knew, of course. Aveline and Sebastian couldn’t look past what they saw as evil to the greater good. Merrill was impossible to have a straightforward conversation with, I don’t think Isabela honestly gave a shit--.” He thinks of conversations across pints of ale, a white smile against tea-dark skin. “ _If I want a tragedy I’ll watch a play._ ” 

“Varric...well, I only told Varric anything if I was alright with seeing it in print.” 

Dorian laughs on cue. 

“And Hawke, well.” He scratches fingers through his filthy hair. 

\--

In a much dingier pub, an ocean and a lifetime away from Amaranthine, Varric asks from behind his cards. “Where’s your head tonight? You’re even worse at this than usual.” 

Anders yanks his attention back to the table and the growing pile of coppers in its center. The Hanged Man is particularly rowdy tonight; it’s payday for the Guard, which means it’s payday for the bookies too small-time too be affiliated with the Coterie, and the whores not fancy enough for the Rose. Anders’ head hurts, vision streaked through with the grey haze of a migraine. 

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to quickly fit his mind back into the flow of the game. Diamondback is complicated and he barely follows it with his attention fully engaged. Varric claims that Hawke’s mabari is a better player than he is, but Anders is fairly certain she’s a cheater. 

At the thought of Hawke, his attention drags irresistibly back to a corner of the common room. Candles throw shadows on the wall, bracketing the two figures with their heads together, one dark and wiry, the other sleek and silver. They could just be unlikely drinking companions, the Ferelden and the northern-skinned elf with the overblown tattoos, but then Hawke strokes fingertips across the back of a lyrium-marked hand and Fenris smiles, soft and private. 

“Showing your hand there, Blondie,” Varric says, and Anders automatically pulls his cards up from where they’ve started to droop. Varric’s brows go up. “Not that hand.” 

Anders’s eyes flick to the corner again. Varric is grinning like his thoughts are printed across his forehead. Annoyance grinds down into a tight sphere inside him. He is suddenly exhausted. 

“You’d think growing up in a Circle you’d be better at keeping a lid on your shit,” Varric says, discarding with a flick of his wrist. 

It’s not said unkindly, but Anders isn’t in the mood to be prodded at. He pulls a card from the deck, realizes he is holding more than he should be--he’s forgotten to discard for the last three rounds. Maker, he’s lucky he’s mostly lost his appetite these days; he’s going to be penniless by the end of the night. 

“It’s been seven years,” Varric says. “You really should look into moving on.” 

“Moving on?” Anders snorts. “Moving on from what?” There’s nothing to be gained from playing dumb--not with Varric. And Justice hates lies unless they are in direct service to the cause. 

“Let’s be honest, Blondie. You’re better off. Sure, Hawke’s a catch--she shits gold, and they did make her Champion, but I’ve never met anyone with such a bright bullseye on her ass for trouble.” 

Anders raises his tankard only to find he’s already emptied it. “And here was me thinking she was your best friend.” 

“Oh, she is.” Varric shuffles his cards back into the deck--apparently the game is over. “But she’s trouble. Luckily, I like trouble. Keeps life from getting boring, and makes for much better fiction.” 

In the corner, Fenris’s shoulders shake as he laughs soundlessly into a curled fist. Pure delight shines from Hawke’s eyes. Making that dour fuck smile must be a rare and precious feat. 

When Hawke had sauntered into his clinic that first year, shaggy hair and hard callused hands, Anders had seen a glimmer of a future beyond all of this, or at least a route through it. Marian is Ferelden and new to the city, eager to carve out a place for herself. Flirtatious and intelligent, a bright spot in Anders’ Dark Town life. According to Anders’ spy network (the dozen or so urchin children he pays a few pennies to intercept letters and listen at keyholes) the Hawke family contains an apostate, and used to contain another. If she has mages for both a sister and a father, she will be willing to listen to reason. 

And she is, at first. She donates energy to Anders’ causes, speaks for him to the city guard, and when Karl is killed by Anders’ own hand, Hawke gets roaringly drunk with him in her uncle’s Lowtown hovel. Anders breaks down into ugly, cracking sobs, and instead of sending him home in a bucket, Hawke holds him and kisses his forehead, tells him that loss is inevitable and the world is a cruel place. 

If Anders were sober enough he would tell her he knows this. No one knows this better than he does. 

All signs pointed to Hawke being the one to turn Anders’ dark path to, if not a bright one, one he did not have to travel alone. But then the two of them, Varric, and Merrill follow a bullshit lead to a clumsily booby-trapped room and a chest full of nothing, and watch as an elf puts his fist into a man’s rib cage and pulls out a chunk of his lungs. Blood spatters far enough to hit Hawke’s boots, and her face comes alive like Anders has never seen it before, and that brief flush of hope is extinguished beneath a deluge of violence and disgust, the same thoughtless distrust that mages face everywhere. Even when Fenris spews venom at any hint of congress with magic, when he picks fights with Hawke’s sister, nothing will dissuade her interest. Anders is at a loss--Fenris is handsome, certainly, but no one is _that_ handsome. 

He lets all of this filter through him as he sits with Varric, getting progressively drunker and more maudlin. 

It’s a bad idea, he knows that, but he still finds himself skulking in an alley behind the pub after midnight, waiting to spring an ambush. The breeze is off the water tonight, thank the Maker, blowing off the worst of Lowtown’s stench. Which still leaves a lot of stench behind, but Anders is too sauced to care, too twisted up and miserable. 

When the door bangs open to reveal a tall, slender figure in a hooded cloak, Anders doesn’t hesitate. He would know that skulking gait anywhere, even without the burn of all that lyrium in the back of his throat. Hawke’s lucky she is not a mage; she probably wouldn’t be able to stand walking down the street with Fenris if she was, let alone fuck him regularly. 

“I don’t know what Hawke sees in you,” is what comes out of Anders’ mouth. 

Fenris stops, shoulders winching tight under the cloak. He makes a sound of deep, unrelenting exhaustion. “I am not discussing this with you, here, of all places,” he growls. “Or with anyone, anywhere.” 

“You have no right to her,” Anders blunders on. “She doesn’t--.” 

“And you’ve no right to tell me with whom I may spend my time,” Fenris’s voice hardens, but he retains that infuriating calm. “I’ve had enough of that in one lifetime.” 

“Yes, yes you were a slave. A Magister made you kill his foes and lick his boots. All mages must pay, etc, etc. I’ve heard it all. Every man, woman, and child in Kirkwall has heard it.” Part of him is appalled at what he is saying. He is not sure which part. It hardly matters. All he wants is some sort of physical reflection of the violence steadily building inside him as the tension in the city tightens. If he dies in this putrid alley, well, it won’t be dignified, but at least it will be over. 

He braces for a hand against his throat, his back slamming against the wall, possibly a fist through his sternum. Fenris’s tattoos flash with temper, but all he does is turn to face Anders fully. It’s clear that he isn’t entirely sober either. 

“You think I hate you because you are a mage, but you’re wrong.” 

“I have hard evidence to the contrary--.” 

Fenris plows right over him. “--I hate you because you let yourself be blinded by your pain and your cause and refuse to see reason or the dangers right in front of you. It will be your destruction, and the destruction of all of us.” 

It has the tone of a prophecy, Fenris a tipsy oracle speaking from the darkness, casting the bones of Anders’ future. 

The next time he finds himself in an alley facing his death he can’t help but marvel how life truly does seem to be an endless network of repeating scenes, the same thoughts and desires again and again. Screams and burning flesh, blood and a city in its death throes. 

Hawke helped him get the ingredients he needed. She got him into the Chantry. Anders lied. It was easy. Destruction--the final act beyond all the planning and worrying and agonizing--that part is easy. 

Around him the city guard stands watch, radiating disgust and barely-suppressed violence. From out of the smoke comes a figure in red and black, hair wild, soot and blood streaking her face. The Champion of Kirkwall. Hawke is his friend, the person he trusts more than all the others, and Anders knows instantly that if he tries to justify his actions or make excuses Hawke will kill him where he sits. There is no pleading that could make his case any less clear-cut. He is a murderer. He has destroyed the lives of innocents. 

He would do it again. 

“What I did was beyond right and wrong. The world couldn’t keep on the way it was. I did what I had to.” 

Anders speaks to the fire in that drafty tower room. It has not burned down despite the fact that he had been talking for a long while. Dorian says nothing.

“I can’t tell you whether or not it was worth it. I think, as you said, that will be for history to decide. We are far too close to ever judge the impact of our actions.” 

Dorian says nothing. 

Anders finds this far from encouraging, but he goes on. “I told you earlier that it was the realization that nothing was ever going to change unless I changed it was what drove me to allow Justice to inhabit my form. I still believe that to be true. No great truths have been revealed to me, I am no wiser than I ever have been, but I do know this: the world does not trend toward justice unaided. It trends to tyranny. Civilization is subject to entropy. It takes constant vigilance to maintain, constant sacrifice.

“People talk about the Chant like it was all inevitable. Andraste succeeded by the grace of the Maker, and the world was always meant to be set right. But whether or not you believe in divine intervention, the Imperium was overthrown because one woman woke up one day and decided that she had had enough.” 

Dorian says nothing. 

“I’m not comparing myself to Andraste, of course. She was remarkable, even if I don’t believe she was truly the bride of a god. I know that history will make me into a monster and a murderer, and I have made peace with that. As long as the world shifts, I don’t care.” 

Dorian says nothing. Because Dorian isn’t here. 

The chair on the hearthrug is empty, and the grate is cold. The storm outside the room’s high window has been replaced by the weak, misty light of early morning. 

Anders stands up and three realizations stack like bricks. The first is that he doesn’t know how he got here. Not only does he not remember the capture or the fight that doubtlessly preceded it, he doesn’t know where he was when it happened. His memory is a streaky haze, raindrops chasing each other down a fogged windowpane. 

The second is that his leg is not injured, nor are there signs that it ever has been. The breaks are gone, as are the swelling and discoloration. He stands to put weight on it and finds it just as sturdy as the other, which is sturdier than usual. In fact, he hasn’t felt this good in years. The stone floor is faintly warm beneath his bare feet, which this far south it shouldn’t be. The light continues to turn that white misty color that Anders is sure he knows but can’t place. His thoughts are sluggish, the elfroot--is it elfroot? If he isn’t injured why would they be giving him a potion to numb pain? Who are they in the first place? He can’t remember seeing anyone here but Dorian. 

The last realization hits him when he’s halfway across the room. 

Justice is gone. Not dormant, not assimilated. Gone. His veins are empty of that white-blue lightning. For the first time in longer than sense-memory persists, he is alone in his head. 

The enormity of it pushes down on his shoulders, the world flying out from under his feet. Numbly, he floats to the door and tries the latch. It lifts smoothly. There isn’t even a keyhole. 

Outside is a long corridor of white limestone, sconces set deeply into the walls like sepulchers, each holding a narrow wisp of purple flame. Anders follows a pattern of colored tiles on the floor, an alternating mosaic of blue and red, toward the distant sound of falling water. He doesn’t know what Skyhold looks like, but he certainly does not think this is a fortress. 

He emerges blinking into a square courtyard. The light here is the same soft grey, but after days (weeks? months?) of nothing but candlelight it burns. In the center of the courtyard is a many-tiered basin, and in the middle of it sprouts a slender, silver-barked tree. Water bubbles up from its roots, tumbling down the tiers of the fountain to collect in the lowest pool. The tree has no leaves, but it doesn’t look dead. The sky is a tumble of greys, like the Wounded Coast before a storm. Perhaps it is winter. But it doesn't feel like winter. It doesn’t feel like anything. 

Like a foreign room that has been filled with the contents of his old one, this place seems familiar. Not safe, exactly--the magic is too chaotic for that--but Anders has not felt safe for a very long time. 

_I know where I am_. Perhaps he has known the whole time. His thoughts are proving difficult to investigate. 

Out loud he says, “Are you real?” 

From across the courtyard, Dorian steps out of the shadows. Or forms from the shadows--the light here makes it hard to be certain. 

“As real as you are, I’m afraid. Even with a very active imagination you’d have a hard time conjuring up something as thrillingly multifaceted as me.” His smile is just the way Anders remembers it from all those evenings in front of the fire. 

But were they evenings? Or just one long stretch of conversation? Realistically he knows that his story had to have been broken down into blocks of time, a beginning, a middle, and an end. But he can’t seem to remember what he’d been doing when Dorian wasn’t there. Did he sleep? Eat? Trying to recall is like trying to snatch the lingering sights and smells of a dream. 

“The last time I was in the Fade,” Anders says, “There were considerably fewer idyllic fireside chats.” He scuffs a bare foot over the warm limestone. “Is this your dream, or mine?” 

Dorian tips his head back to survey the tumultuous sky. “A bit of both--an amalgamation, I suppose. I provided the basic structure and you filled in the edges.” 

“You were the architect, and I’m the decorator.” 

“Exactly,” Dorian says, pleased. “Do you recognize it?” 

“A bit?” It looks a little like his memories of their garden back in the Anderfels, but also like Kirkwall’s Hightown, with a smattering of a Rivaini palace from a fairytale he’d loved as a child. “Did I dream myself up a bare cell to start with?” 

Dorian snorts. “You absolutely did. I had to implant the suggestion that you deserved to be comfortable, or be doomed to let my ass go numb on that void-damned crate. You gave yourself the leg as well.” 

Anders’ consciousness shies away from that thought like a horse from a serpent. He tries to think through the fugue. The sky looks like rain. 

Anders has no memory of moving between the rooms--only that he was in a dungeon, and then he wasn’t. And there is a good reason that Dorian’s ‘truth ring’ is a form of magic he’s never had to deal with before. It’s a form of magic that doesn’t exist. In fact, the way that his thoughts have been lead around in circles, how he’s been so honest…

“Ask,” Dorian says. “You want to.” 

“You’re a necromancer.” 

Dorian nods. 

“You can influence and interact with the dead.” 

Dorian says, “Yes.” 

The wind sweeps across the courtyard, which in a place this small and sheltered should not be possible. It tosses Anders’ hair and flaps Dorian’s coat around his ankles. In the center of the fountain, leaves are bursting into life on the silver tree. 

Anders says, “I don’t remember how it happened.” 

Dorian shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter.” 

Dorian is across the courtyard, and suddenly he is not. A few numb steps is all it takes to reach him. “Why are you doing this?” Anders grabs at the front of Dorian’s embroidered collar. It is shockingly solid beneath his fingertips. “Why chase me here? Why bother with any of it? Don’t you--don’t you have a war to fight?” 

Dorian doesn’t shake him off. He doesn’t fight. His eyes are devastatingly kind. “Anders, the war is over. At least, your war is. It has been for years.” 

Anders closes his eyes, the horror draining away even as it begins to swell. This time he feels the magic. 

“Stop--why are you doing that?” His hands tighten on Dorian’s coat. “You’re controlling my feelings, you’re keeping me calm--.” 

“I have to if I want the Fade to remain stable enough for us to converse,” Dorian says, and yes, Anders knows this. He is just the projection of a personality and memories, he doesn’t really exist--

Reality around them ripples, and again he feels that calming touch in his mind. Or whatever it is he’s using to think right now. “I’m--I’m dead.” 

“Yes.” 

“Why did you--.” Strange, how his heart still pounds and his breaths go shallow, his consciousness mimicking life in the only way it knows how. “I don’t...please help me remember.” Anders realizes he is touching Dorian, palm pressed to his throat, fingers splayed, holding tight, chest to chest. “Please.” 

Dorian is shaking his head. “You don’t need to know.” 

“Fuck you!” Anders’ shouts, the sound ringing out hollowly, like they are in a far larger space than an enclosed courtyard. “Why do you care? You got what you wanted, didn’t you? What am I, an experiment? Are you writing a book on the dead abomination who started a war?” 

Dorian’s shoulders stiffen infinitesimally, and Anders pulls back to look him in the face. “Maker, that’s it, isn’t it? This is just a prestige project for you. All that time you talked to me, pretended to be my friend--.” He breaks off, because of course, Dorian has never pretended anything. He engaged, he offered quiet commiseration, but they aren’t friends. And who knows how much of their interaction had been the Fade playing tricks? 

He sags to his knees on the stone floor, gone cold now, a frozen lake instead of a palace from a fairytale. Dorian comes with him, or he’s dragged. 

“Please.” Anders doesn’t know what he’s asking. There is nothing left to want or hope for. He only longs to understand. 

“Very well.” Dorian presses his hands to his temples, and Anders is flooded with warring memories. 

He stands in that alley, Hawke growling through her rage that Anders is coming with them. He’s going to be put to use to save the city he has doomed. As Anders rises to follow her, a faceless guardsman drives a knife into his back, shouting that his brother was in the Chantry square that morning. Anders falls to his knees, and when he dies in the dust Hawke doesn’t even watch. 

He lies alone in the back of a shallow cavern, body aching from dragging himself across jagged stones. The wagon he’d hired to take him from Kirkwall had been attacked by bandits, and the fall had mangled his leg. He starves alone in the dark, burning with fever, and the dust covers his bones. 

He stands in the front hall of a familiar keep, before a familiar elf. Her eyes are cloudy, her skin stained with ever-widening patches of blackness. _You feel it too_ , Surana says. _The call_. They die together in the humid darkness of the Deep Roads, surrendering to the destiny that has always awaited them, and they take a horde with them. 

“Enough!” Anders is shaking, gripping at the front of Dorian’s coat. “I can’t--why--which one is real?” 

Dorian says, “I don’t know. This is your dream.” He’s less solid now, his features suggestions rather than the sharp, handsome definition he wore when they met. The Fade is breaking down, reducing itself to the chaotic energy of its true state, one from which Anders will never escape. 

And all at once, as Dorian’s hold on the dream loosens, Anders is subsumed in the swell of raw emotion and magic. The fear, the misery of knowing you are done, over, that there is nothing waiting for you but the void. The courtyard with its glowing stone and impossible tree flies away, and he is left on his knees in darkness, the long road of his misspent, worthless life unraveling behind him.

What is he, a villain? A hero? Nothing at all? 

“It’s about time.” 

The voice floods the pathways of his body, lighting him up with familiarity. It’s a voice he loves and hates, and the same way he loves and hates himself. 

“That Magister will no longer keep me from you,” Justice says. He is formless, and yet somehow he is holding a hand out to Anders, beckoning. “Are you coming or not?” 

“Where?” Anders’ voice cracks, desolation oozing from the core of him.

“Peace,” Justice says. “An end to the war.” 

Anders’ laugh becomes a sob halfway through. “That isn’t a place. Besides, I don’t deserve it.” 

Something is drawing him to his feet, pulling him upward. He is rising like heat. “How fortunate it is, then, that no one ever gets what they deserve.” 

Another trick of the Fade, perhaps, but his mind seems to be clearing, uncertainty burning off like mist in the morning sun. He takes Justice’s spectral hand with his own, and lets himself be led.

**Author's Note:**

> autoeuphoric on tumblr!


End file.
